British MEP Godfrey Bloom stripped of party role after offensive comment

Updated
Sat Sep 21 17:38:02 EST 2013

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Godfrey Bloom represents Yorkshire and Humber in northern England.

AFP: Frederick Florin

A veteran politician from the UK Independence Party (UKIP) has been stripped of the party whip role after describing a room full of women as "sluts", the party said.

Godfrey Bloom, 63, made the comment at a fringe meeting at the party's annual conference in London, when he referred to previous comments he had made about women failing to clean behind the fridge.

When women delegates at the meeting protested that they had never cleaned behind their fridges, he said: "This place is full of sluts."

Mr Bloom, who sits in the European Parliament, had "gone too far", UKIP leader Nigel Farage said earlier.

Mr Farage, who had earlier given a speech to UKIP's annual conference, told the BBC before the decision: "My recommendation is that we now, today, remove the party whip."

He said 63-year-old's behaviour had been "selfish" and was overshadowing "all the good things" happening at the conference.

"The trouble with Godfrey is that he is not a racist, he's not an extremist or any of those things and he's not even anti-women, but he has a sort-of rather old fashioned territorial army sense of humour which does not translate very well in modern Britain," Mr Farage said.

"What he ought to have learnt is that time and time again he says things that overshadow the whole agenda that UKIP is fighting for."

The whip was withdrawn after a formal disciplinary hearing.

Mr Bloom, who represents Yorkshire and Humber in northern England, had to defend himself earlier this year when he complained that British aid was going to "bongo-bongo land", in a reference to developing countries.

UKIP believes Britain should pull out of the European Union and is anti-immigration.

Although it does not have a single seat in the British parliament, it made strong gains in local elections this year and could take away votes from prime minister David Cameron's Conservative Party at the 2015 general election.